


Frozen Hearts, Frozen Cream

by mitspeiler, polyfandrous



Series: Polymit's February Writeoff! [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F, F/M, Frost Giants - Freeform, IN SPACE, Ice Cream Shop AU, Jadekat - Freeform, Lasers, Minotaurs, Multi, Pulp, Space Opera, kings in the mountain, non-canon races, rayguns, rosemary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 01:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3310274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler, https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyfandrous/pseuds/polyfandrous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is one of the first installments in a writing contest that polyfandrous and I are doing this month! Each week we will each be writing one short story, a minimum of 3000 words. Only two entries each (so four altogether) will be posted here, as only two weeks of the competition are fanworks. The last two weeks will be original works, likely posted to my Fictionpress account. We'll have details hammered out before then. We came up with topics for each week from suggestions from friends, or friends' choices on suggestions we each made. The topic for each week will be listed at the beginning of each story, and we won't be saying who wrote each story until the next story is posted. We want to see who gets the most comments, so we're not saying who wrote which story. This week's topic is a fanwork that features an intergalactic ice cream shop and at least one time traveling character from the Middle Ages. Let us know what you think!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frozen Hearts, Frozen Cream

Jade Harley, tenth of her name, of the Sessamid dynasty of Garden-That-Was, Crown Princess of the Hundred Worlds, High Priestess of Becquerel the World-Eater, and She-Who-Stirs-The-Stars-In-Her-Cauldron, had acquired a new title.  She had become more than a mere princess of the largest nation in the Skaia Cluster, and more than the chosen vessel of the Great Hellhound, through which He will pass judgment at the end of all things.  She was greater than all of these now, for she had won her new title through the strength of her own hands and the force of her own conviction.

“Grandpa!” she shouted into the receiver, her dark face effervescing with excitement, “I just got promoted to manager!  I’m in charge of the whole shop!”

The Emperor-Scientist sighed.  “I’m proud of you, my dear,” he said, though it didn’t sound like he meant it.  “So now that you’ve done that…are you certain you couldn’t pop down and…rule the planet or some such?  As you were born and bred to do?  Indeed prophesied to do by the previous High Priest?”

Jade blew a loud raspberry into the phone.  “Dammit grandpa, I _know_ that it’s destiny and whatever, I just want to be on my own for a few years of my life without anyone like, worshipping me and suchlike.”  She gestured vaguely, trailing off.  She wasn’t really sure of a way to express her emotions without sounding ungrateful, as if she thought that her own problems were all that significant.  Jade had met more than her share of obnoxious princesses who thought they had it worse than literally everyone else in their respective kingdoms.

It’s not like Jade had run away to be a peasant or a peon on the pumpkin plantations.  She just wanted to experience the lifestyle of the average middle-class people of her empire, and there was nothing wrong with that!  She’d already learned so much, and was certain that the skills she would acquire as manager of a Strilonde’s 31 Billion Flavors™ would benefit the reign of Empress-Scientist Jade more than a life of luxury.

The Emperor-Scientist groaned.  There was just no reasoning with her!  “Just be careful out there Jade darling,” he muttered.  “If you were to disappear, it wouldn’t just be swept under the rug.  There would be a succession crisis!  Billions of people were killed in the last one and our home planet wiped out!  So for the love of the Hundred Worlds, don’t get killed.”

Jade smiled.  “I promise you I won’t grandpa!”

The old man heaved a sigh of relief.  “Oh,” he said, voice perking up slightly.  “If you fall in love, don’t bloody _abdicate!_  This isn’t a 21 st century romance film!  That would _also_ cause a succession crisis and kill billions, only now you’d be married instead of dead.  Parliament is perfectly willing to tolerate you having a commoner for a husband, even if he is a peasant, or an alien or some such.”

Grandpa chuckled and Jade rolled her eyes so hard they almost flew off into orbit.  “That is so totally not going to happen!  Now goodbye!  I have an ice cream shop to run!”

Jade took a moment to straighten her hair in the bathroom mirror, adjusting her pink and orange cap to hide the pointed, furry ears that were the sign of her house.  There were other tells for her semi-divine and imperial nature, like the way starlight seemed to hide just beneath the surface of her every feature, or the slight green undertone to her otherwise nut-brown skin.  If anyone asked, she told them that she was the distant cousin of some viscount on the outer edge of the system, which was not technically a lie as all the nobility are in some way related.  The ears would be a dead giveaway however.

She at last took a second to fix her new managerial polo shirt (vertical red and lilac stripes with a half pink and half orange collar).  It was just a bit too big, and too baggy around the shoulder.  Corporate had commissioned incredibly generic shirts tailored to almost-sorta-fit any humanoind of any gender, with the result that no one was ever comfortable in the things.  Glancing around quickly to see that no one was looking, Jade used her space-folding powers, a gift from the Great Hellhound himself, to refit the shirt.  All the excess material disappeared into the void with a crackle of yellow-green light, and she was left with a much more comfortable and form-hugging shirt.  She spun around in the mirror and gave herself a pistol and a wink.  “Hell yeah, you look like the best manager in the cosmos!”

 

*********

Tavros looked out into the depths of space, and whimpered slightly.  The little minotaur had taken this job in order to get over his phobias and inadequacies.  The accident that crippled him had left him adrift in space for nearly three days, and it had filled him with a deep fear of space-travel and a chipped horn to boot.

This particular Strilonde’s was floating through deep space at a way station between the Hundred Worlds and the Crab Nebula, light years from the nearest planet.  Outside the sliding glass doors was a parking lot, and just beyond that were a few other restaurant ships, all orbiting a space station/hotel with about a hundred permanent residents and the last post office in the galaxy.   The whole little group was surrounded by an atmospheric field the size of a small moon, to make space for future development, but the only people who came here were travelers.  It would never be filled up.  Two or three small ships flew around the station, circling for a dock.  Beyond it was the glimmering, angry light of the distant nebula, glaring redly into his soul.  But between here and there was nothing.  Nothing at all, not even air, just the emptiness of space.  “I mustn’t be afraid,” he gasped, “I mustn’t be afraid…”

The three little ships made sharp turns and sped up over the Strilonde’s.  The glass doors began to rumble.  Something big had just entered the atmospheric field.  The hotel-station’s emergency lights began to flash, the sirens blaring like a primitive sexbot during intercourse, and a second later, the ice cream shop's did so as well.

Behind him, the Mayor started going crazy, jumping everywhere and whimpering.  The little insect-man was a drifter from somewhere in the Crab Nebula; he’d never given his name, but he’d been wearing a sash with the word “mayor” on it when he arrived, and that’s what they called him.  “It can’t be!” he shrieked.  “It’s!  It’s!”

Tavros rolled his wheelchair back from the doors as a huge red silhouette materialized behind the hotel-station.  It was shaped like a spearhead and covered in barbs. “Are we being invaded?” he asked, his bovine ears drooping, chocolaty brown eyes about to cry.

“Her!” shouted the Mayor, leaping behind the counter, from which came a violent scraping sound and panicked grunting.

“What’s going on here!?” Jade barked, rushing into the dining area, hands on her hips, standing proud with ~~regal~~ managerial splendor.

The red ship smashed through the space station like it was papier-mâché.  A storm of debris collided against the Strilondes’ force fields, where it disintegrated into ash.  The Strilonde Corporation’s ice cream shops were among the most well-defended facilities in the known universe, but the impact still made the shop shake, and the view outside briefly transformed into a plane of white hot fire as the heat from so many impacts ignited the debris, before the smart-windows bloomed dark black, protecting the inhabitants eyes.

People were screaming and hiding under the tables, and the employees would have joined them if not for Jade’s commanding presence.  “Everyone stop panicking!” she shouted, amplifying her voice with her demonic majjycks, “all Strilonde’s crew members, arm yourselves and form up in front of the doors!”  She ran over to the cash register and hit a button underneath.  The shop was too far away from the nearest police station, and the Strilonde family didn’t trust any authority other than their own anyway; the hidden button summoned a pair of security robots.  They dropped from the ceiling in the form of a cube and a pyramid and began to unfold into more humanoid shapes.  Jade meanwhile strode purposefully over to the door and whipped the pistol (she’d built it herself) out of her leg-holster.  With the turn of a dial on the side, the barrel extended to rifle length and the handle folded out into a slim, white rifle stock.  She sighted down the barrel as the two robots clanked over to her side; one small and boxy, the other tall, sharp and angular.

Tavros rolled up next to her, clutching a rocket lance with a look of terrified determination.  The heavy infantry weapon was an enormous metal spike studded with thorn-like protrusions, tipped with a drill that could be fired and detonated as an anti-tank warhead.  It was meant to be used by sparklesoldiers in powered armor, but the minotaur race of the deserts were strong, even menials such as he.

The Mayor stood at her other side, carrying a pair of ice cream scoops that he’d sharpened into shivs by scraping them with a knife made of scrap metal, currently wedged in his sash.  He still wore the mayoral sash, and had torn up his spare polo to make a colorful headwrap.  He was glaring towards the doors, eyeball twitching.

“Is this everyone?” Jade growled, looking at her four companions.  “I thought Eridan would be in today too!”

“Oh, uh,” Tavros stuttered, “he told me to tell you he’d be late today because he had something important to do, but didn’t tell me what it was.”

Jade snarled.  “That pissbaby had a job interview somewhere else and he didn’t even tell us!”

The smart-windows had been starting to clear for about ten seconds now, and something could be seen moving just outside on the parking lot.  Then, quite suddenly, the doors exploded.  Black smoke and shitty rap music streamed into the restaurant.  The customers and employees began to choke and cough, but Jade and the two anbroids opened fire into the haze, shooting emerald beams of super-heated plasma like tiny green suns.  They splashed off of something, a field of some kind, breaking up into streams of liquid fire and melting the linoleum tiles.

The smoke cleared.  In front of them stood a pair of robots, hulking and mollusk-like, red and covered in spikes just like the strange ship.  And between them stood a woman.  She was taller than any human woman and appeared to have been hewn from glacial ice, with eyes glowing a hot pink color.  In place of hair she an ethereal wreath of clouds, churning white and pale blue behind her for many yards like a rolling stormfront, swirling and twisting off into scraps that dissipated into the air.  She wore a tight fuschia bodysuit that emphasized her curvaceous figure, and her face was as intensely beautiful as it was intensely condescending.  In her left hand she held a red trident with a large spoon-like blade on the opposite end.  “Yo,” she said.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who are you and why are you attacking us?” Jade asked, sighting down the length of her raygun, wondering if it would do any good.  “This is a peaceful waystation and we’re just an ice cream—”

“”Bitch I did not say you could talk!” the woman sneered, showing off a mouthful of icicle teeth.  She slammed the spoony end of her weapon on the floor and a wave of frost washed over the cheap tiles, stifling all the fires.  “My name is Betty Crocker, the great frozen Batterwitch, and I am the fuck-mothering Imperial Frostiness, QUEEN OF FROZEN YOGURT!”

People began to scream and beg for mercy, having heard of her fearsome reputation for great villainy and great business.  She raised her arms, smiling as she drank in the suffering of the patrons. She raised her voice in a commanding tone, powerful and dark like chocolate-cherry pie; “long has my bomb-ass franchise ruled the wallets of people in the Crab Nebula, my signature Genocide by Red Velvet FroYo™ actively burning calories while you lick it,” she ran a hand up her ample hips to her narrow waist, “preserving that girlish figure while filling your tongue with flavor and your brain with dangerously addictive substances.”

The Mayor whimpered, trying to hide behind Tavros’s wheelchair.  The Batterwitch’s eyes shifted their focus to the little, hard-shelled man, flaring bright with color for a second.  “You!” she said.  “You were my favorite customer back home.  I have a treat for you,” she said with an ugly sneer.  She produced a small red bowl, seemingly from thin air, and out of her clawed left hand, she poured forth a thick substance, steaming with cold, red as freshly spilled blood and gleaming like rubies.  “Take it!” she said, lobbing the Genocide by Red Velvet at the Mayor’s feet, where the ceramic bowl split in half.  With tears in his beady white eyes, he fell to the floor and started devouring the creamy redness with a horrible, guttural sound.

Jade glared.  “Leave my employees alone you snow-hag!” she shouted, and fired off three plasmabolts right into her face.  A red jewel embedded in the Batterwitch’s tiara, half hidden by the mass of not-hair, flashed, and the bolts scattered uselessly once again.

The Batterwitch scowled, striding toward Jade on long, powerful legs, looming over her like a titan.  “Bitch did I give you permission to speak?  Or try to mar my absolutely _flawless_ fuckin’ face?”  She took her free hand and twisted the barrel of Jade’s gun into a useless knot.  Cold once again emanated from her claws, dragging a twisting, ferny pattern cross the metal of the gun, and before Jade could react, it touched her skin.  She felt intense pain, like fire but cold, begin to crawl up into her arm, and where it passed it left nothing.  Her arm was hardening and turning black.  With great effort, Jade yanked her arm free, and ran screaming over to the bathroom, the pain overwhelming her knowledge never to turn her back on an enemy.  Thankfully, her enemy took the moment to gloat instead of finishing her off, while Jade kicked down the door and cranked the hot water in the sink, thrusting her arm under the stream.

“Jank-ass little shit joints like Strilonde’s is officially closed!” boomed Her Imperious Frostiness.  “Crab Nebula’s best and only ice cream parlor chain, Betty Crocker’s Ice Cream and Home Bakery™, has gone intergalactic!”  Her two robots quickly disassembled Jade’s and hurled the parts aside.  Then their chests opened up, revealing glistening red soft-serve machines, armed with neat stacks of red ceramic bowls, and just one, red, knob.  “Now how’s about y’all have some free samples?” she said.

The robots made their way through the dining room and force-fed every single customer with that glistening crimson fluff.  Jade could only watch helplessly as the steam rose from her arm frozen.  It was still cold.

 

The Batterwitch had neglected to give Tavros anything, so he was left to mop up the remains of the empty parlor.  Meanwhile the Mayor, having grown a mild immunity to the deadly soft-serve concoction after years of ingesting the stuff, had tended to Jade’s wounds, red shame still smeared all over his lips.

The arm had to go, just below the elbow.  He put a lilac spoon in Jade’s mouth to bite down on and lopped it off with an axe, then took off his headwrap to bandage the wound.  “You know we have a first aid kit under the register,” Jade mumbled, delirious.  A voice was calling out to her from across the void.  Buzzing, loud, ancient.  It sounded like lightning before it becomes lightning, a swarm of bees made of energy and purpose.  It crackled and roared with absolute power.  The sound would have killed a lesser person, the weight of it was insufferable.  Even now, Jade struggled with it.

She could do it right now.  Let Becquerel fully into her body and bring about the end of all things.

Then a word came to her mind.  Kim.  What was that?

She remembered the owner of border region’s Strilonde’s 31 Billion franchises.  A lesser member of the Strilonde house, she considered being assigned to these far reaches a kind of exile.  She was a very pretty woman with snow white hair and lilac eyes who’d looked incredibly professional in a dark skirt suit.  Pinstriped dark grey on dark blue, with a lilac shirt and no tie.  She wore glasses but didn’t really need them.  Was that Kim?

No.  She was Rose.  KIM was an acronym.  KIM Protocol.  Rose had told Jade over the holophone the other day, when she’d been given her promotion.  What did KIM stand for…?  There was something she was missing.  Just like her arm.  It had frozen up and now it was gone.  Frozen and severed.

Oh.  “Where’d you get that axe, Mayor?” she asked, sitting stark upright from where she’d been laying in one of the booths near a window.

The Mayor jumped back, looking around nervously like he did when confronted with something unexpected.  “It was in the big freezer,” he explained.  “Just hanging from the door?  In case you get locked in I guess?”  Jade didn’t respond for a second, so he began to shake, afraid he’d done something wrong.

“Mr. Mayor,” she said, “We need to initiate the KIM Protocol.”  She pushed herself to her feet, wincing slightly at the pain in her disfigured arm.

Tavros wheeled up, his mop stained red.  “KIM, ma’am?” he asked, shame obvious in his face.

Jade laid a hand—her only hand—on his shoulder and smiled.

 

*********

The freezer was cold and dark, dimly lit with a bulb that shone blue with caked on ice.  Every one of the 31 Billion flavors existed here as tiny tubs to be enlargified when needed.  The task of finding any give flavor was herculean, which is why it was handled by a mechanical arm hitched to the ceiling; there was never any reason for an employee to enter the freezer, except for maintenance.  And the KIM Protocol.

Towards the back, buried under a pile of all the cherry flavors in existence, was a slab of greenish ice upon a slab of marble.  A dark shape was visible inside.  Jade was cold, having been standing here in nothing but her polo shirt, with something hard and uncomfortable in her shirt pocket; an abandoned cigarette case stuffed full of melted Genocide by Red Velvet squeezed from Tavros’s mop.

The instructions for the KIM Protocol were quite clear.  Jade signed a legal looking document written in an ancient alphabet that she could barely decipher.  It essentially converted her to some religion or other, or made her a citizen of something.   _I still love you Bec,_ she called across the void to stifle the angry growls of the Hellhound.   _But this is something I need to do._  She pressed her thumb into a pad of ink, and then pressed her thumb-print into the space next to her signature; Tavros extended his hand to help her hold the papers.

On either side of her, Tavros and the Mayor held red candles.  Behind them, bound and gagged, was Eridan, wearing a red polo shirt with a white trident embossed over his heart.  He’d gone over to Betty Crocker’s, and the bastards had nicer uniforms than they did.  He had become emaciated, the devilfood wasting away first his body fat and then his muscle and bone tissue, leaving him gaunt, even skeletal.  “Yea,” Jade began, reading from a script, awkwardly shuffling through the leaves by holding them against her chest with her forearm.  “Yea, though you see thy father, thy mother, and thy brothers and sisters, yea though you see all your line stretching back to the beginning of the world,” her voice was strong and clear.  She’d been trained as an orator after all, being a crown science-princess.

Behind her, Eridan leaked red foam from his mouth.  He’d eaten dangerous levels of Genocide by Red Velvet.  “Lo do I call your name!” Jade continued, “I bid thee leave thy place among them and return from the halls of Death!”

She stuck the script in her teeth and held out her arm to Tavros, who balanced his candle between his knees and injected her with an old fashioned syringe full of blood.  Next to her, the Mayor was doing the same thing, having placed the candle on his head.  Jade took the papers from her mouth and waited for Tavros to inject himself with yet a third needle, then began to read again.

Just as the first letter crossed her lips, Eridan tore free of his bonds, standing up and screaming at the top of his lungs.  He lunged at Jade, intent on ripping the molten FroYo (just plain Yo?) from her corpse if need be.  “Return to us in your nation’s greatest hour!” Jade shouted just as Eridan’s icy hands clamped around her neck.

The slab of ice exploded, and a sickle scythed through the air as fast as thought, whipping over Jade’s head and slamming into the FroYo zombie’s skull.  Striding proud and confident through a mist of powdered ice came a young man in dark grey, hooded cape that flowed out behind him like a river of lead.  His face was angular and ashen, his hair prematurely streaked with grey, and his eyes were cherry red.  He wore a simple brown shirt over a coat of chainmail, with a hideous wound in his chest, a great diagonal slash, like a weeping eye.  On his head was a crown of red metal, welded together from shards of bronze blades, dulled just enough to prick and irritate his scalp.  On his hip were two more sickles, heavy bronze things with jeweled ivory hilts.

KIM.  King in the Mountain.  On Earth-That-Was, the greatest kings had been put into a sleep like death and hidden away, to be awoken at their country’s greatest need.  Once believed to be a myth, the Strilonde Corporation had funded an expedition and in secret, discovered the truth.  They were real.

They’d taken the Kings in the Mountain from their respective mountains, equipped them with genetic modifications and cybernetic enhancements to supplement the layer upon layers of ancient majjycks and blessings the kings already had, and then acquired the rights to all of their countries’ culture, heritage, and peoples.  They’d then sent one out to every business region where their monopoly on the ice cream trade was shakiest, to be unleashed at the discretion of the manager should the ice cream competition every become hostile (which it had, a distressing number of times).  Headquarters back on Skaia horded all the best ones of course, King Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa, Walt Disney.  But even some bronze age tribal chieftain no one knew the name of was more potent than any of the Grand Army’s super-soldiers.

“HAIL TO THE KING BABY!” he shouted skyward, his mouth full of teeth filed sharp.  “KARKAT THE MAGNIFICENT IS BACK IN BUSINESS!”  He drew both his extra sickles, and they gleamed at his sides like a crustacean’s claws.  “Where are the English?” he muttered, looking suspiciously at Jade’s companions.

“I don’t know what the English family has to do with anything,” Jade said hesitantly.

“Then who’s attacking us?” He glared, looking around shiftily.  “The Turks again?  Or is it that asshole Dracul?  I know he’s young but he’s pure evil, I knew it from the minute I saw the fangs on that—”

“Shut up!” Jade shouted.  “We don’t have any time to waste.  An alien ice cream franchise has moved into our territory and it looks like they’re gonna compete with Strilonde _very aggressively!”_

Karkat the Magnificent ( _more like Karkat the Adequate,_ Jade thought) tilted his head, looking at her as if she had just started speaking in tongues, and Jade realized that what she’d just said would make no sense to an ancient king.

“What’s wrong with your boob?” he asked, pointing.  “Is there a plague or—?”

Jade slapped him.  “It’s a cigarette cage you fuckass,” she snarled.  Pointing out the freezer door, glaring so hard she could swear she ruptured a capillary, “your enemies are out there in a big red…flying castle thing!  Go destroy them!  For the glory of…” she trailed off and looked down at her papers. “Lopah!  That place!”

“You pronounce it like a Basque,” he snarled, “so stop saying it, and I don’t take orders from random peasant girls no matter how pretty they are!  Where is the current king?  I wanna tear him a new one for letting things get the way they are!” He turned around, taking everything in.  “THERE’S A PLAGUE ON, EVERYTHING’S COLD, AND THERE’S MINOTAURS AND—” he stopped, staring at the Mayor, whose feelers and cilia were busily undulating, “AND WHATEVER THE HELL _HE_ IS RUNNING AROUND WILLY NILLY!”

Jade slapped him again.  “I didn’t want to have to do this but you leave me no choice!”  Jade snatched off her cap, revealing her proud, pointy white-furred ears, the insides pink as shells.  Tavros and the Mayor gasped, falling to their knees.  Or rather, the Mayor fell to his knees and Tavros fell off his wheelchair, tried to rise to a sitting position, failed because of the weight of his horns, and turned it into an awkward kowtow with a deep sigh.

Karkat tilted his head again.  “I don’t get it.”

Jade nearly fell over.  “Didn’t imperial families have dog ears in your day?  My line was crafted from the DNA of Habsburgs, Bourbons, Romanovs, Windsors, and nearly every other royal family on Earth-That-Was!”

“Well all that interbreeding probably caused some mutations!” Karkat snarled.  “I mean look at me!  Royal families have fucked up faces, it’s in the blood!” He smacked his forehead.  “You’re lucky you wound up as pretty as you are, I’m over here looking like some kind of monster.”

Jade blew a loud raspberry.  “My eyes are too big and I have freckles and did you just call me pretty twice?”

Karkat looked down at his shoes, intent on not blushing.  “It’s not like I said you were Aphrodite incarnate or some shit, you’re just like, very attractive and wow I must have spent a _long_ time in the ice if they’re letting women walk around in shirts that tight—”

Jade slapped him again so hard he reeled.  “We need to get a fucking move on, your majesty!” she said with an overly saccharine smile.  “That soft-serve makes people crazy, I don’t want to know what it will do if it hits the rest of the hundred worlds!”  And with that she grabbed Karkat by the lapels and pulled him out of the freezer.

 

*********

The regional headquarters of the Hundred Worlds/Crab Nebula border Strilonde’s was located on Firecloud, the last planet before the edge.  Named after its spectacular sunsets, where twin pink suns lit the clouds up like the fiery collision of a pride parade with a stained glass factory so they looked like rainbow colored fires leaking streams of pink, gold and fuchsia into the glittering ocean below.  The clouds were unique, expending massive amounts of rain all at once like a waterfall instead of the normal drizzling shower.  They were considered dangerous when they drifted over the land, but over the ocean they were beautiful.

Rose wasn’t paying attention to that, having seen it a thousand times before.  She wrote a snippet of poetry with her left hand while her right sent off emails of dubious importance to bosses that couldn’t give a crap.

Her desk started rumbling.  Normally she wouldn’t care, the planet was prone to small earthquakes, but she did look up when her favorite office toy, the clacky-ball-thing, fell off the edge.  She sighed and stood up to get it—

And beheld the massive, spiky, red ice cream shop, come to steal her business.

She pushed a button on her desk.  “Kanaya,” she said.

“Do you want to have sex on your desk again, Miss Strilonde?” asked the secretary.

“Perhaps another time,” Rose drawled, “but right now I need you to pull up emergency plan omega.”

 

*********

_Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?_

_Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?_

_They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;_

_The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow._

 

Karkat recited, as he armed himself.  An ancient lament of his people, which, completely coincidentally, resembled a verse written centuries after his death by J.R.R. Tolkien.

“ _Very_ nice,” said Jade, watching him don his glittering armor, steel engraved with bronze dragons and copper sea creatures, the golden crest of his helmet beaten into a lobster tail.  “I mean the song!  I wasn’t checking you out or anything!”

Karkat smirked.  “Sure you weren’t.  Not like I was cursed by a witch to have only the most annoying fucks fall in love with me at first sight.”  He got a mischievous look on his face.  “It takes the form of a beauty mark, just so you know.”

Jade squinted at his face.  “I don’t see one.”

“Oh it’s not on my face,” he said, grinning.  “Want to find out where it really is?”

Tavros coughed loudly as he, mercifully, interrupted.  “Your horse is ready, um, sire.  Er, sires.”

She had come when he’d called, travelling from the depths of time.  The sacred eyeless horse of Lópah, whose name in English is Maplehoof.  Her diamond hoofs kicked up sparks as they struck the ground, tiny though she seemed.

She stood proud, not three inches tall, in the center of the dining room, equipped with silver armor Karkat had pulled from his pocket.  “Are you sure she can carry us?” Tavros asked, looking sideways at the creature.

“Magic horse travels through time and space because I whistled and you think it can’t carry us?” Karkat rolled his eyes.  With that, he hopped onto her back—

And suddenly Maplehoof was huge as an elephant, or rather, it seemed now like she always had been.  “Grab on!”

The Mayor clambered aboard and nestled in her ears, Karkat reached down and slung Jade up behind him, and Tavros reached out to touch her, just brushing his hand against the pink mark on her haunch, and she was off.

Jade marveled at the horse, a marvelous feat of quantum engineering created by ancient magicians who didn’t even know the meaning of those two words.  All four riders stuck fast to the horse as it sped around the dining hall, only slightly buffeted by wind, less than if they’d been riding a real horse. “Every step she takes doubles in size,” said Karkat, “I circled the whole world in one step once!  We just need to get up to speed and we’ll be—”

Maplehoof stopped, whinnying slightly.  The Mayor did his panicked head-shake.  Tavros’s head spun dizzily and he dropped his rocket lance.  Jade gasped.  “Right in the heart of the red castle,” Karkat finished, looking proud.

They were in Betty Crocker’s dining area, surrounded by hungry customers.  More than had been in the entire waystation, for sure; some had certainly been kidnapped from passing spaceships and nearby planets.

Many were eating an assortment of pies and cakes, but almost all had a side of Genocide by Red Velvet.  The ones that didn’t were gaunt, icy zombies, roaming the floor for any spare dollop of the red they could find.

“Finally decided to come over eh bitch?” The Batterwitch snarled as she emerged from the kitchen about five yards away, a tray of freshly baked red brownies in her bemittened hands, “well too late, we ain’t hiring!”  She then noticed Karkat, not that he was difficult to notice, and her eyes widened, lips parting in a sultry smile.  “Wait who’s the stud who thinks it’s a Renaissance festival up in here?”

“HE IS THE LAST THING YOU’LL EVER SEE FUTURISTIC SPACE BITCH!” Karkat screamed, more a shriek thanks to unleashing most of his spare rage all at once.  He flipped off of Maplehoof’s back and flung two sickles at the witch’s head.

Her ruby flashed red, and the sickles shattered against her force field.  “Yo zombie minions!” she shouted, placing a delicate, clawed hand next to her mouth, “put this sucker on ice or you won’t get no more cream!”

And with that every trace of red velvet disappeared from the room.  Every single customer began to foam red, their skin turning the blue-black of frost bite, and howling like demon wolves, they charged at the party.

Jade moved to draw her extra gun from its secret holster, but Karkat was faster.  He moved like a hurricane, a pure unstoppable force, jumping, spinning, slashing.  Every time he swung his sickles, another zombie fell dead.  He was a howling whirlwind of bronze and steel, as if his armor weighed nothing at all, and the screaming, shouting and swearing seemed to only give him more power.  As Jade watched him, Becquerel growled approvingly.  Karkat was a king, just like her grandfather, but the two couldn’t be more different.  Sure, her grandpa would fight, but he’d do it by building a defensive perimeter and then calling in an airstrike, not get right in the thick of it.  Jade imagined Karkat leading a charge of knights, all like himself, on some ancient battlefield on a faraway planet that no longer existed, and she shivered.

Any zombie that got to close was either drill-stabbed by Tavros or eaten by Maplehoof while the Mayor danced encouragingly.  A flying tooth striking Jade on the cheek snapped her out of her reverie.  She saw the Batterwitch winding up her arm as if for a pitch, an awful scowl melting away to be replaced by an evil grin as she flung her trident straight for Karkat.  It zoomed through the air, its aim straight and sure—

And Jade dipped into Bec’s power, and it disappeared in a flash of green light, reappearing in her hand.

She leapt down from Maplehoof’s back.  The witch frowned at her.  “You took my spork,” growled the Batterwitch, hair twitching like the tails of a thousand angry cats.

Jade smiled sweetly, though her eyes betrayed a rage that could boil oceans, “well, I am so sorry!  But, you see, _you took my fucking hand!”_

And she threw the trident right back with a nasty overhand swing.  She didn’t know how to throw spears and tridents, so it spun through the air, but she accelerated it with her magic, and it crackled with green energy as it shot forth, ready to bury itself in Her Imperial Frostiness’s frozen heart—

She caught it.  “Hah!” she shouted, baring her fangs in triumph.  Green sparks burned her icy flesh, shooting up steam, but she seemed not to care, and the trident cooled within moments.

While her personal shield was down, Tavros shot her in the chest with his anti-tank missile.

The ice cream shop-fortress pitched and tumbled, falling towards the atmosphere field.  A massive, smoking hole tore through the floor, and through it could be seen the Crab Nebula, seeming to spin crazily as the ship veered out of control.  Its internal gravity made it seem as if it were floating perfectly still, but then it heaved heavily to one side and Jade was thrown to the floor.  Tavros rolled right past her.  “Please somebody stop me!” he shouted, waving his arms.  Just before reaching a huge bay window that overlooked the vast infinity of space, he tilted forward and fell off his wheelchair.  The Mayor skittered after him and helped him up.

“FIGHT ME YOU LOAD OF OVER-STIMULATED ASS-JUNKIES!” Karkat shouted, shaking his balled fist as all the surviving zombies scurried away.  The explosion had ruptured all the ice cream machines, and bloody red FroYo was spilling onto the floor like a wound, and they fell to their knees in front of it and devoured it hungrily.

Jade pushed herself to her feet, wincing as she hurt her wounded arm.  It began to bleed again.  “Shit,” she hissed, putting pressure on the stump.

Karkat rushed over, concern on his face.  “Let me see it,” he said.

“No,” Jade said, pulling back.  She had many doubts as to his knowledge of medicine, and even if he had any, it would be medieval European medicine, which was worse than no medicine at all.

Karkat growled, knuckling his forehead.  He scraped his knuckles on his helmet, growled angrily, and threw it aside to knuckle it properly.  “Look,” he hissed, “I am your _king_ , and you are my _country_.  Well, you and your merry band of henchmen,” he said after a slight pause looked over his shoulder at the Mayor trying to stuff Tavros into a booth, the minotaur’s horns preventing easy access.  Jade thought she saw a hint of a flush on his cheeks.

“Anyway, this is your hour of greatest need,” he said, “and I can _only_ help my country now.”  It was so corny and so sweet, Jade _had_ to give him her arm.

He gently unwrapped the makeshift bandage and winched at the gruesome stump.  Then Karkat placed his hands over the wound, and a crimson light flowed out of his palms, spreading over her arm like a balm, knitting the skin together.

Jade gasped as her pain finally eased after all these hours.  She leaned forward, without really thinking, and kissed Karkat’s forehead.

He cracked a fangy smile.  “Jade—”

An icy claw punched its way through the floor just behind him, and Karkat was seized by the head and flung across the room.  The Batterwitch surged out of the rent in the ground, her hair hissing and writhing like a nest of rattlesnakes.  She looked like a nightmare, all the flesh from her front side having been rent clean off by the blast, exposing her icy muscles and sinew, and her huge, beating fuchsia heart.  She roared in Jade’s face, frozen spittle striking her like hail.

Jade once again moved to draw her pistol from its hidden holster, and she got it halfway out of her cleavage before the Batterwitch grabbed her with both hands, pinning Jade’s good arm to her side.  “MY GENOCIDE IS GONNA CARVE RED MILES OF ADDICTED LUNATIC CRAVINGS ACROSS THE HUNDRED WORLDS AND EVERY GALAXY IN THE UNIVERSE AFTER IT, AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME _YOU BASIC LITTLE HO!”_

Then the Batterwitch screamed in pain, dropping Jade.  Karkat had just buried her sickle in her side.  “You are gonna go right into my private batter,” she hissed, “and I’ll eat a little bit of your pretty little ass every day for the rest of my life!”

She turned to lay hands on him, to freeze him to death like she’d done to Jade’s arm.  Then Jade finally drew her pistol and shot her three times in the heart.

 

Rose Strilonde arrived an hour later aboard a gunship loaded with glittering sparklesoldiers, piloted by her impossibly iridescent secretary.  They killed the remaining zombies, loaded up all the bodies and gave Jade’s crew blankets and hot chocolate.  “We’ll need to study this red velvet frozen yogurt,” said Rose, extruding a dollop onto her finger from the only intact machine and tasting it.  She nodded, eyes widening, wiping her tongue and then her hand with a handkerchief.  “It’s delicious.”

“Ma’am,” Jade said with a smart salute of her stump, being careful not to spill the chocolate, “I think she was planning on invading the rest of the system, you need to be on the lookout for—”

“I know,” said Rose with a wave of her hand.  “One of them tried to invade Firecloud.  The threat was quickly neutralized.”

Jade blinked.  “How?  Another KIM?”

Rose shook her head.  “No.  It was the omega plan, also known as the Pollo Loco Gambit, an ancient strategy from Earth-That-Was.  Should competition ever become alarmingly fierce in an incredibly short amount of time, our computer technicians will hack the enemy’s websites and create a free promotion for their most expensive signature dish.  Millions of people will then flood the competing eatery with fake coupons.  The enemy will have no choice but to either give it to them and lose enormous amounts of money, or refuse and also lose enormous amounts of money when they go home angry.  In the latter case, we’ll make an announcement the next day that the fake coupons will be good for a small chocolate butterscotch ice cream cake at any Strilonde’s 31 Billion, because we just feel _so bad_ about our competitor’s duplicity.”  Rose smirked, folding her hands behind her back.  “It worked even better than it normally does, because Betty Crocker’s was giving out free samples, so half the people were suddenly hooked on their FroYo as well as angry about the lack of the promised free Execution By Chocolate-Cherry Pie.”  Rose scoffed.  “Who allowed this woman to name desserts?” she asked, scowling down at the remains of the Batterwitch.  They’d fused to the floor, and a team of sparklesoldiers was busily scraping her off.

Jade nodded.  “I guess everything would’ve been fine without my intervention,” she said, frowning.

Rose tsked.  “Nonsense.  You and your team defeated the enemy owner and CEO, and destroyed one of the few restaurants too remote for our gambit.  Even now we have KIMs and sparklesoldiers bleeding across the outer planets trying to pick off these stragglers.”  Rose closed her eyes, clearly savoring a thought.  “I’ve been promoted, Jade.  I’m going to the headquarters on Skaia, working directly beneath Sir Bro.  It would be too difficult to manage the border region on top of my new duties, being so far away and all.  How would you like to be regional manager?  I’ll even pass off ownership to you.”

Jade grinned.  “That sounds amazing!”  She turned around and saw Tavros.  “Hey, you’re manager of the old store now!”

Tavros coughed on his hot chocolate and Jade giggled.  “Wait,” she said, suddenly serious.  There was someone missing.  “Where’s Karkat?”

Rose cocked her head to the window Tavros had almost fallen out of.  “He’s over there trying to look intense.  Why do you ask?”  But before the last word was out of her lips, Jade had jumped to her feet and sped off.

 

Karkat had his foot up on an overturned chair.  His left hand rested on the pommel of his sickle, and his right on Maplehoof’s nose, soft and moist.  He stared grimly out into space.  “Never thought I’d see the stars this close,” he said.  “Truly I have been reborn into an age of wonders, where people live in the sky and girls can wear like, really really tight shirts.  God _damn_ Jade is gorgeous.  Shirt leaves _nothing_ to the imagination but oh _fuck_ , like damn.”

Maplehoof whinnied in agreement.

Someone hugged him from behind and he froze up for a moment.  “Thank you Karkat,” Jade whispered breathily into his ear.  “I would never have been able to do it without you.”  Her lips were irresponsibly close to his ear.  He felt the heat rising in his face and tightness in his pants.

“Gorgeous huh?” she whispered.  Karkat whimpered.  Jade cackled and let him go, turning around to face her.  “You seem tough but you’re just hiding a soft gooey center under that hard exterior,” she said, punching his shoulder.

Karkat growled, getting redder.  “Well under that gooey center there are shards of glass and red hot iron and THE RAGE OF A BEAST!” he screamed up into the ceiling, clenching his hands into claws.

Jade ignored him.  “They’re gonna give me a robot arm,” she said, wiggling her stump at him.  “But I’ll never forget what you did for me, I promise.”  Her expression became very serious; this was a solemn vow.

Karkat couldn’t handle it anymore and dropped to one knee.  “Jade, will you marry me?”

It was Jade’s turn to redden, and she backed away so quickly that she fell over onto her rear.  “Um!  Um!  No!  I mean! Not that I would be entirely objectionable!  But like, in several years maybe and not _immediately!”_

Karkat was cackling.  “Holy shit you actually believed me!  How dumb can you be!”  He laughed until his sides ached, until Jade got up and ran over, punching him and kicking him and calling him an asshole, and kept right on laughing through the beating.

She left him with a couple of bruised eyes and a bloody nose, but he was smiling and laughing with all his heart, and she felt terrible.  “Oh my God!  Karkat I’m so sorry!” she covered her mouth with one hand, her stump instinctively folding across her chest.

He got back up.  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, wiping off his nose.  “I can’t be hurt too badly,” he added, his bruises fading, blood retreating up his nose, “See?  Not as long as I’m defending my country.”  He took a step towards her, and took her hand in both of his.  “But…if you weren’t kidding earlier…how about we go courting?” he muttered, looking down at his shoes.  “Or whatever you kids call it these days…”

Jade smiled.  “It’s a date.”

 

*********

Rose only had a bit of paperwork to catch up on before she left Firecloud for Skaia.  “I’m going to miss you, sunsets that are trying too hard,” she said to the gorgeous pink suns as they shone down at the ruined Betty Crocker’s, half submerged in the ocean.  The last piece of paperwork was, appropriately, a report detailing the chemical composition of Genocide by Red Velvet FroYo™.  “I don’t believe it,” she muttered, eyes widening just slightly.

It was just red velvet batter in the yogurt machine.  No drugs or potions, just an especially tasty recipe, with a hint of white chocolate for body and a dash of beet juice to make the color pop, but other than that, it was normal.  Red velvet is literally that delicious.

 

**Author's Note:**

> am I the only one that remembers Condy being very health conscious and working to maintain her figure because that's canon


End file.
